“Don’t be silly. They’re a multibillion-dollar international corporation. To fuck over Paula Carrothers, they’d be willing to pay millions more.”
“One hundred thousand dollars? Do you hear yourself?”
“I know. I should’ve asked for more. But let’s not be greedy.”
“All that money. Every single penny. It’s corrupt.”
“On the bright side, there’s plenty of it,” Andre says. “In order to win, our team needs to feel that someone else will lose. Elections are a zero-sum game. Winners and losers. This time, Paula Carrothers drew the short straw.”
The crowd clears the intersection, and the old woman waves the Jeep across. In silence, Brendan and Andre cruise past the woman, and Andre suppresses his urge to give the bird the finger. They pass another two blocks before stopping, this time beside a chapel, where a sign advertises: TRADITIONAL SERVICE AT 9:00 A.M. CONTEMPORARY SERVICE AT 11:00.
* * *
Alone in the attic, Andre plans the next twelve weeks. He appreciates the extra cash that PISA’s thrown his way, part of which he’s set aside to buy airtime on Carthage’s sole local radio station. That station offers twenty-four hours of evangelical talk, a fire-and-brimstone format obsessed with tales of evil and sin. Right now, the station’s broadcasting a lively call-in show, an interfaith panel that features four kinds of Baptists. This week’s topic is the demise of feminine grace.
Despite the views expressed, the show’s chatter isn’t half-bad. The panel has chemistry, timing, rhythm, and style, with each pastor, like an actor in a troupe, playing a role. There’s the bookish one, the funny one, the charming one, the worldly one. Andre thinks to accept their invitation to call in and join the conversation. Hello? Am I on the air? First-time caller, longtime listener. My boss, an older Irish lady, she uses profanity all the time. I mean all the time. She curses like a one-armed pirate caught in a typhoon. What the fuck’s a good Christian to do? The thought tickles Andre, but he saves the prank for another day.
Gin in hand, Andre studies Brendan’s voter database. The kid’s done a decent job, but the database is shallow. They’ll need more precise and discriminating information about each voter. One Internet service provider has a monopoly in Carthage, and, for a price, the provider will sell intimate information about its clients. The provider will also install custom tracking cookies on its customers’ computers, the same tech that empowers merchants to tailor online ads based on a person’s web searches. For an additional fee, the provider, which bundles the Internet with cable and phone, offers a package that includes digital fingerprinting, spyware that supplies a buyer with precious data mined from each client’s e-mail, texts, television, and cell phone. The personal information to which the campaign will have access is virtually limitless.
The panel takes a break for words from sponsors. A missionary appeals for donations to buy solar-powered audio Bibles for illiterate African orphans. A British financier claims that smart investors prefer silver. And a barbecue shack on Carthage’s east side promises discounts for families who proclaim Jesus saves at the time of their order.
* * *
That night, Andre wakes, soaked and trembling, like a drowning man pulled from an icy sea. He can’t remember the whole dream, only the final image: his head in Cassie’s lap, her soft touch against his cheek. The image is a fraud, a scene born not of memory but of hope, and, as his senses sharpen, he realizes he’s been tricked, made blissful one moment and heartbroken the next. He hopes that if he drifts back to sleep, then he’ll slip back inside his dream. It’s a fool’s fantasy, but in this moment, the dream represents the only possible future that could ever bring him joy. He lies in bed, wide awake and frustrated. The image has faded, vanished from his mind, left in its wake the same abject loneliness he’s known each night since Cassie left.
He spins his feet onto the floor, bathes his toes in a ray of chalky moonlight. One glass of gin and another. He picks up his phone. The time is two in the morning—Cassie’s probably still up—and if he doesn’t hear her voice, doesn’t express how he feels, then he fears that his dream will never come true. They haven’t talked since their breakup—and God, he misses her voice—but he knows a phone call now will do more harm than good. Besides, what if she’s with her new man, a relationship he’ll never understand? He gets she needs to rebound, needs to explore her options, needs not to sleep alone. He needs that too. But if he lives a thousand years, he’ll never understand why she picked her new man. The Redskins experienced their worst season in five years, and her guy, a Canadian at that, couldn’t get ten seconds on the field.
On the verge of a panic attack, which seems to happen more often these days, he paces his bedroom, notices that the house is dead silent. In the kitchen, in the attic, he can’t find Brendan, and he wonders whether the kid returned from Mass. He doesn’t worry that Brendan is bleeding in a ditch but fears that his young apprentice, disgusted by their campaign, has bought a ticket and flown back home. A quick search of the house and he finds Brendan on the porch, leaning against a square column, cigarette ablaze in his hand. Brendan brings his forefinger to his own lips, points toward a naked willow and an outcropping of shale. Andre narrows his gaze and, at first, feels a moment’s frustration, blind to whatever his attention is being drawn to. But then he sees a flurry of movement, and three cottontail rabbits, blended into the overgrown garden, bounce into view. A sobering wind cuts his face, and Andre takes a seat atop the porch, arms folded against the cold. He watches a snowflake float onto his lap, and he’s grateful that tonight Brendan is here.
Part II
The Canvass
Chapter Seven
Seven seconds left, and Brazil has the ball. The score, 2–1, favors Ireland, but Brazil’s bone-thin striker storms the field, propels the ball between a pair of sluggish defenders. For a moment, it feels inevitable that the score will tie, but this ball is not fated to pass Ireland’s goalie, who flies through the air, arms spread wide, and smashes his forehead against the ball. The video game resets, and Brendan breaks into dance, a few choice moves he’s choreographed for this very event. The performance is a sort of hip-hop-infused Riverdance, looks like an epileptic rat stuck in a glue trap. Proof that while Brendan Fitzpatrick possesses an array of talents, dance is not among them.
“Switch controllers,” Andre says. “Mine is broken.”
“How much do you owe me? Five losses in a row. Let me get my calculator.” Brendan checks his phone. “Oi, Dre. It’s nearly four thirty. We’re supposed to meet Tyler in five minutes.”
“Again?” Andre looks outside. The sun won’t rise for three hours. “Shit.”
“I’ll load up the Jeep.” Brendan grabs a sweater. “Meet downstairs in ten?”
Half an hour later, the Jeep races into the darkness, passes two hunters in orange vests who march along the road. Some twenty miles to Tyler’s home, time enough for Andre to assemble four signature-collection kits. Grunt work that, in any other campaign, an intern would do, bundling glossy pamphlets that explain the nexus between small government and American freedom. These he binds with star-spangled ribbon, then slips the set inside one of four denim bags, made in Ecuador, that bear a banner that crosses the American and rebel flags.
He removes the plastic that seals four fresh ledgers, confirms that each page features the text of all three initiatives. Andre pats his breast pocket, checks beneath his seat. Brendan says, “Glove box.”
There, Andre finds his pen with erasable ink. He scans each ledger’s first page, scribbles inside one dozen fake names. In his experience, a voter is far more likely to sign a petition if the voter believes that the initiative already enjoys popular support. No one likes to sign a petition first, or second, or eleventh for that matter, but every red-blooded American dreams of joining a noble political cause. He’ll erase these fake names later.
The laser-jet printer, powered by a cigarette-lighter socket and secure as a baby in a car seat, spits out lists of names, ad
dresses, and corresponding bar codes. These names are today’s targets, the fifty registered voters whose signatures each canvasser must collect. Brendan has combined polling data with his index of voters, creating an algorithm that assigns each of Carthage’s sixteen thousand voters an individualized score between 1 and 100. The score predicts the likelihood that the voter will support the liberty initiatives. Three weeks into the canvass, the algorithm is a success. In the first four days, canvassers solicited each registrant assigned a score between 90 and 100, with a 96 percent success rate. The following days, the team approached voters assigned scores between 80 and 90, and then 70 and 80, and then 60 and 70. If only life were that simple: friends, lovers, strangers on the street, each with their own compatibility score.
Brendan says, “Door hangers.”
“Door hangers!” Andre reaches beneath his seat, retrieves a box of door hangers embossed with the details of the campaign’s website and social media. Each door hanger features a quote from a founding father, hawkish lines that summarize an essential principle of American liberty. Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God. —Benjamin Franklin. Andre’s favorite door hanger includes: Only kings and fools will live for tyranny, and only the brave and righteous will die for freedom. Wise words from the Honorable Thomas Peyton Whitford, a fictitious founding father entirely of Andre’s creation.
“I feel like we’re forgetting something,” Andre says. “Didn’t we make a checklist?”
“We left it back at the house,” Brendan says. “Maybe we should make a second checklist to remind us about the first.”
They pull onto a utility road that runs between forested hills and feels like an entryway into nowhere. Lonesome rusted trailers sit atop concrete slabs, and an occasional flat, small house is abandoned, with uncut grass, a foreclosure sign, and boarded-up windows.
Two more miles and Brendan parks across from the Lee home, a modest lot with no neighbors for miles. Tyler, scowling, sits in an idling truck whose grille is ready for battle: stainless-steel guard, mounted floodlight, winch spooled with cable. Tyler wears his campaign sweatshirt, navy, snug, the logo atop white cursive script: Carthage County, Proud and Free. Brendan says, “Cell phones.”
“What?”
“You forgot the cell phones.”
Andre removes four custom phones from the shoebox at his feet. Each is loaded with an app that allows a canvasser to scan a bar code assigned to each individual target. To Andre, this app is a godsend, allows him to analyze real-time signature-collection data, to confirm who’s bringing in names and who’s not.
“Ready?” Brendan dons his parka, a pair of thick thermal gloves. One thing about the kid: he fears the cold. The slightest chill and he mews like a kitten caught in a storm. “We rush the street on three?”
“Why is that asshole in his truck?” Andre gestures toward Tyler. “He could just as easily be warm inside his house. Drinking coffee, watching television. But no. Every day. He sits out here, waiting, sulks like a spoiled child.”
Andre tries not to be petty, but these past three weeks, he’s constantly regretted his decision to ask Tyler to join his team. Yes, Tyler’s polite and respectful, and he always has a stupid smile on his face. But in Tyler’s eyes Andre sees something dangerous, something mischievous, something a little too sly. Tyler obtains the fewest signatures, for which he always has an excuse. And worse yet, he’s quick to take offense when Andre ignores his equally impractical and shitty ideas.
“Do me a favor,” says Andre, crossing the street. “Don’t apologize.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Every time we’re late, you apologize to him. Sometimes you apologize three times in a row. I’m sorry. So sorry. We won’t let it happen again. You’re pathological.”
“Maybe the problem is we’re always late.”
“Tyler works for us. We pay him well for his time. His time is ours to waste.”
Tyler leaves his truck huffing and puffing. His sweatshirt makes him look like a tool, like his wife dressed him this morning, both of which are true. Right now, across town, Tyler’s canvassers are waiting at a local diner, where, each morning, Tyler briefs and equips his team. The meeting at the diner is Tyler’s idea, an act of public relations, a move to strengthen the perception that this ragtag campaign is his own creation.
“Sorry we’re late. So sorry. Real sorry.” Brendan shivers through his scarf. “Can we talk in the garage?”
Inside, standing beside a workbench, Tyler says, “Don’t know how many names we’ll catch today. It being Youth Day and all.”
Andre looks to Brendan, and they both blink.
Tyler’s face shines. For once, he’s the keeper of knowledge unknown to others. He clearly savors the moment, takes his time to explain that Youth Day is a Carthage tradition, the one day each year in which the law allows minors to hunt without tags or licenses. Kids under sixteen can hunt on public and private lands, can each kill one regulation deer.
“My father took me, and his father took him,” Tyler says. “I take my sons every year. And one day, my sons will—”
“We get it,” Andre says. “This youth hunting day—”
“It’s just Youth Day, brother,” Tyler says. “Don’t y’all have Youth Day where y’all from?”
“Sounds to me”—Brendan can’t resist—“like Take Your Daughter to Work Day, but, you know, without daughters. And with guns.”
Brendan and Andre make each other laugh, but Tyler is undeterred, shares tales of Youth Days past, silly melodramatic parables about emotionally bereft fathers bonding with deer-slaying sons.
“Local businesses give prizes,” Tyler says. “Biggest buck, most coyote pelts—”
“You can hunt coyotes on Youth Day?” Brendan says.
“Folks can hunt coyotes year-round,” Tyler says. “Coyotes are a huge problem. Woman down the road, she owned one of those small dogs, you know, a shitshoe—”
“Shih tzu?” Brendan asks.
“Damn coyote snatched the shitshoe from her backyard. Right in front of her. Most folks around here bait traps. Some use antifreeze, but that takes a while to work. I use my own brew.” He points toward a low shelf, between boxes of old VHS tapes, where a stoneware jug bears a skull and crossbones drawn sloppily in purple marker. “A few drops on chicken bones. Put the trap in the trees right outside the property line. Brother, problem solved.”
Brendan has a line of coyote questions—no matter the subject, the kid has questions—and Andre stops paying attention. Instead, he calculates the harm this silly holiday will cause. Tyler’s canvassing team is four: Tyler, Chalene, their eighteen-year-old son, and Tyler’s slow-witted friend. Andre needs each in the field. A single absence could hurt his plans.
“I’ll leave to you and your people to decide whether to work on Youth Day,” Andre says. “But today, and today only, we’ll pay your people double. Four dollars per signature.”
“That’s mighty generous,” Tyler says. “But Youth Day is our heritage. It’s sacred and—”
“Fine. Triple. Six dollars a name. Today only. Usual verification. Tomorrow, the rate returns to two dollars.”
“Well.” Tyler purses his lips, grabs his nape. “If it were up to me—”
“Also, for your people that decide to work, lunch is on you.” Andre shows a roll of twenties, peels off two hundred dollars, of which, he knows, Tyler will spend forty and pocket the rest. Andre hates that he must bribe his own straw man. “Get your people something special. Not pizzas or burgers or that fried fish shit at the gas station that everyone around here loves.”
“Reckon missing one Youth Day won’t end the world.” Tyler takes the denim pouches. “Shit, I worked two shifts last Christmas.”
Tyler releases a deep belly laugh, and soon enough, all three are laughing deeply, as though they’re old friends.
* * *
The Carolina Casa, a fusion of Southern and Mexican, is the region’s fastest-growing fast-food chain. The mea
ls are cheap, swiftly prepared, available at all hours of the day or night, but to Andre, the Casa’s spongy, brackish, warmed-over fare represents all that he hates about dining on the road. This Carolina Casa caters to the students who attend Nathan Bedford Forrest High School, which is located one block down the road. All the students must do is pass beneath the roadside billboard on which a nearly nude blonde hugs a chrome pole: Ladies! College can wait. Earn up to $1,000 tonight!
Brendan loves the Casa, can’t get enough, and the kid’s recent video game victory entitles him to spoils, among them gold, glory, and the choice of where to dine for breakfast when they’re running too late for the kid to cook.
“Maybe Javier’s hoecakes.” Brendan reads the Casa’s drive-thru menu. “What are you getting?”
Andre settles into his seat, opens the newspaper. The front page features a photo of last year’s Youth Day editor’s choice: a twelve-year-old boy, plump and cherry-cheeked, balanced atop a bent knee, scoped rifle slung over his shoulder. The boy’s holding a slain buck by the antlers, a buck so beautiful that Andre regrets the creature met such a fate. Pictures like this abound inside the paper. Adorable boys, some as young as six, with bloodstained hands.
He struggles to understand this quirky community’s sensibilities, the way strangers narrow their gaze to ask if he’s from town, and, if so, which church he attends. Last week, a flock of sparrows fell from the sky, at least a thousand dead birds raining across a half-mile radius, bodies pelting rooftops and car tops and the elementary school playground at recess. The local paper interviewed a university professor, the ornithologist swearing that such phenomena are not unusual in nature. No one in Carthage believed him. Some believed it was evidence of a vast conspiracy. Some believed it was a message from God. Everyone agreed that the media and government would never tell the people the truth.
“Let me guess what you’ll order.” Brendan points toward the drive-thru menu. “You want coffee. No sugar. No milk. Black and bitter.”
The Coyotes of Carthage Page 8
